News / Articles

Mill Cities Relay

The Mill Cities Relay is the final event in the MVS SIRS and is scheduled for Sunday December 7^th.

Mill cities is a 27+ mile relay from Nashua NH to Lawrence MA (finishing at Sal’s) run by teams of 5. Legs range from 2.5 miles to 10.8 miles, with 3 legs in the 5-mile range. There are also teams of 3 that participate in 3 of the legs.

MVS participates in this relay in 2 ways:

1. Having lots of teams participate (it's so much fun)

2. Providing a team of volunteers for Check point 4 in Methuen: we check in runners as they come in and start the ‘Sunset Start’ at 11:15 – for all Leg 5 runners whose leg 4 teammate hasn’t arrived yet.

This year there will be one change to the relay:

The ‘sunshine start’ teams will be running the first 3 legs of the relay, rather than the last 3 legs. This means that the longest leg for these teams is in the 5-mile range – which means it should be easier to pull together teams. It also means that these teams don’ t get to sleep in – and will start with everyone else in Nashua.

The other potential change is to expand the Coed and female age 60-69 teams to 5 people. This will be voted on in October.

How to participate with MVS

This year we’re requesting that everyone who wants to participate in running Mill Cities fill out the following form: Mill Cities Relay Race Team Assignment, even if you have a complete team. Why?

• We can have a complete list of all MVS members that are interested so no one falls through the cracks

• When a team needs 1-2 members, it makes it easier to see who is available (and not already on another team) – so easier to fill in those gaps.

If you want to volunteer

1. You do earn a volunteer point if you haven’t earned one yet

2. You’ll spend the morning – roughly from 8:45-12 at the check point

3. After the volunteer team wraps up, you can come to the post race party

4. If you want to run in the relay and volunteer, make sure you’re running leg 1 and arrange for your car to be at Exchange point 1.

5. Like last year, we will have a volunteer sign up through club express as well – more to follow on this!